Ahimsa, meaning non-violence, is the first Yama on the eight-limbed path to samadhi, oneness or pure consciousness. Ahimsa asks that we stop managing ourselves, our experience, and others. It dares us to trust other people's journeys and love and support them in their highest image of themselves, not of ours. In this grief-stricken climate, riddled with back-and-forth quips and superiority, compassion lies as this ever-present backdrop. But it is hardly, if ever, accessed.
In the evening, I retire to the sofa and retreat from my restlessness. I begin to write so things could fall back in order. I worry less about being somewhere, as someone. And rather, being nowhere now as no one is fine, really.
The bottomless chasm broadens from here to there with no end in sight. The part-time nihilist in me feels all this is pointless, directionless. Some days, I am floating, practically being carried; other days, I’m falling nowhere fast.
Aparigraha means practicing non-attachment. To acknowledge the impermanence of worldly pleasures, states of being, objects, nature, even. To remove oneself only to be placed elsewhere. To migrate to new places, begin new chapters, and adopt a different practice. To enter new roles and get out of our somebodyness.
I thought I was disenchanted by yoga, as though I were ready to indefinitely step off my mat and delve into equally important past times. But I realized that one, I cannot separate yoga from everything else–it is engendered into everything– and two, my practice wasn’t so much lost as it was developing. Portions of my spiritual and mental practice have been sustainable. I no longer seek my edge, but am not surprised by my impulsivity to seek a higher anything. I move more slowly and fight fewer battles. I am less anchored in my beliefs, which I often question, as I mosey this world like a walking contradiction. Feeling overpriced, I do not cling to any role too long, afraid I’ll forget how to slip into performances as a mother, wife, daughter, and writer.
I wonder obsessively about progressing in a career that I felt never took off. I hold an onslaught of knowledge and perpetual wisdom that I’m still parsing and adopting. I bop between self-preservation and -destruction. This hopeless and sinister desire to be better, more enlightened, or known misrepresents my waywardness toward humility and simplicity. I nurture this newfound joy of littlelism, preserving what is meaningful and unsung. I compartmentalize, separating the professional from personal and stay wary of my inflated ego. I see everyone tangling their spirituality with profit and becoming a somebody or someone’s somebody. I’m leaning into undoing all of this, knowing absolutely nothing and knowing no better and no different.
I’m not ahead of the next guy. I am feeling neither more certain nor self-realized than the next.
I’m walking right beside everyone else.